Freshwater crayfish and their relatives have not yet been taken into the focus of stem cell biology, biogerontology, cancer biology and epigenetics although research of the last decade suggests a promising potential. In this chapter, the state of the art in these emerging fields of astacology, emphasizing contributions made by the parthenogenetic marbled crayfish as an emerging model organism have been reviewed.

In this chapter, knowledge on this novel and on-going pathway for alien crayfish species introductions will be reviewed. In line with the other chapters in this section, emphasis will be placed on the marbled crayfish (Procambarus fallax f. virginalis Martin et al. 2010). The history of the marbled crayfish is inseparably tied to the aquarium trade, which introduced this species to the scientific world and which, at the time of this writing, is still the only known ‘natural habitat’ of marbled crayfish.